 |
| Is it just me, or does it appear that whole governments are starting to act like Howard Dean? |
Posted on 10/09/2006 8:44:50 AM PDT by Flavius
ANKARA: France risks being barred from economic projects in Turkey if it adopts a controversial bill on the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in remarks published on Sunday. The draft law, to be debated in the French parliament Thursday, calls for five years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros (57,000 dollars) for anyone who denies that the World War I massacres constituted a genocide.
If the bill is passed, Gul said, French participation in major economic projects in Turkey, including the planned construction of a nuclear plant for which the tender process is expected to soon begin, will suffer.
“We will be absolutely unable to have (such cooperation) in big tenders,” he told the popular Hurriyet daily, adding that he had “openly” warned his French counterpart Philippe Douste-Blazy about the repercussions of the bill.
“The French will lose Turkey,” Gul warned in further remarks, to the Yeni Safak newspaper. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was also furious. “This is an issue between Turkey and Armenia. It is none of France’s business,” he said late Saturday in Istanbul, quoted by Anatolia news agency.
“If Turkey’s prime minister-or any other minister, a historian or an intellectual-goes to France one day and says it was not a genocide, what are you going to do? Throw that person in jail?” Erdogan asked.
Ankara says the bill is designed as a political gesture to
France’s Armenian community. Many here also see it as a punch below the belt by opponents of Turkey’s European Union membership that will tarnish the country’s image in Europe and fan anti-Western sentiment among Turks.
Faced with increasing EU warnings that it is failing to ensure freedom of expression, Turkey has accused the bloc of applying double standards, arguing that France itself was blocking free debate on a historical subject by criminalizing genocide denial. About 500 people, activists from a small left-wing party, took to the streets in Istanbul Sunday to protest the bill, laying a black wreath outside the French consulate. “France stop! A boycott is coming,” they chanted. “The genocide is a lie,” their banners read.
The Ankara Trade Chamber, which groups about 3,000 businesses, threatened to boycott French goods, calling EU countries “hypocritical.”
A senior lawmaker has also warned that the Turkish parliament may retaliate with a law branding the killings of Algerians under French colonial rule as genocide and introducing prison terms for those who deny it.
On Saturday, Erdogan met with representatives of French companies doing business in Turkey, among them industrial giants such as carmaker Renault and food group Danone, urging them to lobby French MPs to vote down the bill. The draft was first submitted in May but the debate ran out of parliamentary time before a vote could be held.
In 2001 France adopted a resolution recognizing the massacres of Armenians as genocide, prompting Ankara to retaliate by sidelining French companies from public tenders and cancelling several projects awarded to French firms.
The massacres are one of most controversial episodes in Turkish history and open debate on the issue has only recently begun in Turkey, often sending nationalist sentiment into frenzy. Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.
Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label, arguing that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.
|
| Is it just me, or does it appear that whole governments are starting to act like Howard Dean? |
Good to see France taking a stand.
Don't blink -- France won't "stand" for long.
Semper Fi
While my grandmother was one of only two from her family not killed by the Turks during the genocide, I find it alarming that governments are criminalizing opinion, even misguided opinion.
What's next - making it illegal to argue against the idea of human induced global warming? Oh yea, they are already trying to do that.
I have no dog in this hunt, so perhaps both sides can just present their core arguments. Thanks.
Do most Germans, and the German government, take umbrage at others condemning the Holocaust? I think not, although I'm sure those who had nothing to do with it (the majority, since few are that old) get tired to death of hearing about it.
In fact the German's themselves punish holocaust deniers, IIRC. The Turks should do the same, rather than being deniers themselves. They just have to blame it on the Ottomans.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.